Curation as a creative practice
written by Sasha Elina, London-based curator and director of concert platform Eternal series
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Desire for an idea is like bait. When you’re fishing, you have to have patience. You bait your hook, and then you wait. The desire is the bait that pulls those fish in – those ideas.
The beautiful thing is that when you catch one fish that you love, even if it’s a little fish – a fragment of an idea – that fish will draw in other fish, and they’ll hook onto it. Then you’re on your way. Soon there are more and more and more fragments, and the whole thing emerges. But it starts with desire.
David Lynch
Curation is a quiet practice.
Long days of searching, sketching, playing with imagination turn into actually engaging other people into that play. I am aware how personal it is, how much you expose, as a thinker; making that thinking public, tangible. Thinking and feeling become one, or at least that is what I strive for: not so much thinking, but feeling as a result of it. Curation is a creative practice, but it is also a social one: a practice of communication and care.
Despite being surrounded by many creative practitioners, without whom none of this would work, most days it feels quite lonely. I see all those people joining in: to perform, to compose, to design, and to experience. I observe them from aside, having done the work to start a mechanism behind an event. Suddenly, the feeling of achievement, a certain closure, quietly soothes me. The play is in their hands now, when a direct communication between a performer and an audience is established, and I can leave — there is not much else to do for me there.
For me, to really be a curator is to be in tune with your psychological portrait, with all its intimate, hidden characteristics, rather than the public, professional one. In the way artist Dmitri Prigov put it, one is psychosomatically destined to be a curator. I think of this notion often. Does my fascination with arranging chairs in an event space before a concert signify what he refers to? Perhaps, amongst numerous other qualities and quirks.
Photo credit: Santosh Tawde
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My path as a curator, before I or anyone else around me even began to really use that word in a musical context, started with Eternal series in 2014 in Moscow — a city I was born and raised in. The first “Eternal May” title came about to accompany a single event, this name being co-created with composer Vladimir Rannev, whose piece was in the programme along with other living Russian composers. We sat in a cafe trying to describe the feeling that the concert programme should provoke. Tender, pensive, sad… Eternal May was followed by several other Eternal months, the series becoming a learning platform to me. This learning, of course, continues: with no end.
The original Eternal series existed for about a year; and upon moving abroad to find myself both emotionally and professionally torn apart, it felt only natural to return to the series as a true comfort project. The 2024-25 edition of Eternal series is an attempt to combine my independent curatorial practice with full-time employment. It is also an attempt to support and present very different artistic perspectives, and to do so in a form that isn’t afraid of being, to some extent, provocative: for example, placing works that are in some ways contrasting together, or showcasing something niche alongside music more familiar to the audience. I run the series on my own, and every time a new event is planned, I get a strike of excitement for connecting with new people — audiences and artists alike.
The first five events found home at St. Giles Cripplegate church in the Barbican, featuring Apartment House, Idrîsî Ensemble, Alan Fielden, Delphine Dora, Henry Cyer, Neil Luck, and many other names that speak for all things experimental. The next events — Eternal May and Eternal July — are moving to new locations, migrating across London in search of new acoustics and spatial arrangements to work with.
Photo credit: Felix Charteris
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I am asking myself: what constitutes an event? How is it framed? What are the elements that I as a curator should consider important for a meaningful musical experience? In designing those, should they be limited to sound? I’ve been always looking for framing mechanisms: questioning walls, opening windows, asking the audience to move around, or try and find the most comfortable position to sit still for an extended period of time, either ignoring or reasoning with traditional concert norms.
When I think of music, I always think of space — and then I also think of my great interest in architecture. Back in 2018, contemplating an ideal project that would combine those interests, I followed an impulse and spontaneously proposed a collaboration to a friend, architectural photographer Yuri Palmin. That is when the Music Space Architecture festival and platform was born. I worked as a Head Music Manager at ZIL Cultural Centre in Moscow at the time, and in one of the meetings with all the departments, the director posed an urge to allocate some remaining funding to a project in mind. Who would like to take it? My hand jumped up before my thoughts, and the project formed in my mind as I pitched it, successfully securing the funding on the spot. Things happen this way too, and I cherish these moments of risk, boldness and spontaneity — what’s there to lose?
We organised the first Music Space Architecture festival to bring together multiple diverse conversations about architecture and music, sound and space, things perceived and measured. We discovered that under the wide umbrella of this project, any voice is meant to be heard — and that was the beauty of it. We planned the second festival for April 2022, simultaneously thinking of how to transfer it further into the international scene whilst I was planning my move to the UK.
The second festival got cancelled when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24th February that year. After moving to London, I organised a single event focusing on church organ as an architectural musical instrument, with a performance by Eva-Maria Houben and a small series of dedicated texts on the MSA website. As of this month, there are no specific plans made, but I have a lot of hope for the MSA to get back to life and grow in the near future.
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I refuse to take on a project unless I can visualise it, putting myself in the position of a listener. When I curate, I think of an audience, imagining people with different desires and demands: How has their day been prior to going to an event I curated? What is their mood like? Are they going to connect with the music? How is it going to alter them? At the core of my approach is trust in the audience’s flexibility; openness to feel something, rather than just think it. To be bold, and to be caring. This is what my intuition tells me each time I try to balance between compromising and following a strong desire to provoke emotions. That balance, truly, is the foundation of my practice.
In the coming months, I will be exploring and practicing this approach in the Eternal series, and perhaps some other projects. Sometimes I will fail, and sometimes succeed, but it continues as long as artists want to create, musicians to perform, and audiences to experience.
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Eternal May 2025 takes place on 30th May at The Swiss Church, London, featuring Henry Prince, Tarek Elazhary, Maddie Ashman, and Daniel Padgett – learn more and get tickets:
Eternal July 2025 takes place on 5th July at Grand Junction, London, featuring Marijn Cinjee & Julia Sinclair and House on the Strand – learn more and get tickets:
References:
- Lynch, David. Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. Michael Joseph, 2007.
- Misiano, Viktor. Five Lectures on Curatorship. GARAGE, 2000.
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Sasha Elina (pronounced Yélina) (b. 1994) is a curator and musician based in London. Sasha is the founder and artistic director of the international project Music Space Architecture, dedicated to identifying and investigating different areas of interaction between music and architecture, sound and space. She is the curator of the Eternal series in London, working with local and international artists across musical genres. Since November 2024, Sasha has been working at Brent Music Academy in the capacity of a programme manager. As a vocalist and flautist, Sasha performs composed and improvised music both solo and in various collectives. In March 2024, she self-released her debut album “Different Songs. Vol 1”, featuring pieces by Seamus Cater, Tomás Cabado, Eva-Maria Houben, and Johan Lindvall.
Header photo: Felix Charteris
